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Top1. Introduction
The main reason for the existence of living beings on earth is the availability of natural resources including materials, water, energy and fertile land (The UBA, 2019). However, the growing consumption of these resources is creating a severe threat to the environment and therefore is a matter of serious concern (https://www.science.org.au/curious/). With growing population and fast industrialization of emerging countries such as India, China and Brazil, the demand for natural resources is increasing across the world and putting pressure on already strained resources (World Economic Situation and Prospects, 2020). The current consumption level requires extraction of resources ten times more than that it used to be 30 years ago, at around 60 billion tons of raw material every year (Global Resources Outlook, 2019). Going by the same growth trend, our future extraction of natural resources could reach 100 billion tons by 2030 (Global Resources Outlook, 2019).
The cost of rapid exploitation of resources has already been felt by society in the form of climate change, shrinking water & forest reserves, extinction of many species and erosion of fertile land (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2011). The perennial use of these resources at the same pace will deprive future generations of resources that we are enjoying. Mass consumption, consumerism and consumption as a lifestyle have soaked social classes (Agrawal & Gupta, 2018; Ture, 2017; Pravet & Holmlund, 2018). The growing population in developing countries and unprecedented rise in the consumer class in India is expected to further drive demand for products (Mittal and Gupta, 2015). The increasing demand will lead to creation of solid waste and emission of carbon (Bech-Larsen et al., 2019), thereby causing harm to the environment (United Nations Environment Programme, 2015). Hence, the deteriorating environment and fast depleting resources necessitate the need for new consumption practices and raise questions about the assumption that consumers make rational choices.
Recently, the issue of responsible consumption has been given attention from academicians, environmentalists and intellectuals due to growing concerns among the public about the repercussions of overconsumption (Ahsan, 2021; Boutroy, 2020; Gadhavi & Sahni, 2020; Gonzalez et al., 2009, Kumar, Manrai, & Manrai, 2017; Sharma and Rani, 2014, Stockholm Environment Institute, 2018). The importance of responsible consumption can be assessed from the fact that it is listed among one of the seventeen goals that form the 2030 agenda for sustainable development (UNEP, 2015). Responsible consumption is a relatively new and emerging field of research, and thus only a few studies have been carried out (Hawkins, 2020; Kjeldgaard, 2018; Marchand, 2008, Rabasso and Rabasso, 2011; Kopnina, 2011, Aomari, 2014, Guarin and Knorringa 2014, Jastrzębska, 2017, Kunchamboo et al., 2017, Tseng et al.,2018, Lubowiecki-Vikuk et al., 2020). To the best of the authors’ awareness, no previous effort has been made to identify the enablers of responsible consumption. Therefore, this is the first study in the domain that identifies and links eleven variables leading to responsible consumption. The present study is a modest attempt to conceptualize responsible consumption and its enablers. It further prioritizes the enablers accounting for responsible consumption. The findings of the study would contribute towards responsible use of resources and improve environmental performance.